CLACS Blog

Welcome to the CLACS blog. Here you will find information that has to do with Latin America and the Caribbean, New York University, or anything that we at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at NYU (CLACS) find relevant, useful, or just interesting. Here is the link to the official CLACS website. If you would like to submit an article or photograph to this blog, you may email it to us at clacs.nyu[at]gmail.com.

The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) at New York University is an interdisciplinary teaching, research, and public information program. It is a central hub for Latin America-related research, courses, outreach programs and collaborative efforts across the NYU campus as well as the greater New York City region. CLACS is located in the King Juan Carlos I Center (KJCC) on the south side of Washington Square Park. CLACS sponsors many events, including speaker series and film screenings, and helps get the word out about others. You can find out about these events by checking our events page or signing up for our listserve through NYUHome. Most events are free and open to the public.

CLACS offers multiple MA programs, research funding opportunities for master's and doctoral students and affiliated faculty in all NYU departments and schools, and access to interdisciplinary courses that involve affiliated faculty from over 22 departments. Please visit our website for more information.

Christine Mladic
MA Candidate at CLACS

Quechua Class, originally uploaded by CLACS - NYU.

Last fall, 2008, NYU offered its first Quechua class. About 12 of us met three times a week with Odi Gonzalez of Cusco, Peru. Like the beginning of learning any new language, we struggled through the first few weeks, battling knee-knocking waves of frustration, surprise, success and total confusion. Now in our second semester, we may not quite yet be able to rock out in Quechua, but we can carry on simple conversations and make some jokes. Stay tuned for more posts about Quechua classes...

Quechua is an indigenous language spoken by an estimated 10,000,000 people in South America. Although it has a major presence in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador (Quichua), there are also Quechua speakers in parts of Colombia, Argentina, Brazil and Chile. Quechua existed before the Spanish arrived in South America in the early 16th century, and it existed before the Incan empire of the 1400s established Quechua as its official language of the state. Because of its co-existence with Spanish for about 500 years, and because of the changes in the world that have occurred over the centuries, some words are not translatable into Quechua; rather in certain contexts they are spoken in Spanish.

The US Department of Education allocates funds to CLACS at NYU so that Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships can be offered to students. FLAS Fellowships are awarded separately for both annual year and summer study. Quechua is one of the languages offered at NYU that is eligible for FLAS Fellowships. Visit the CLACS FLAS Fellowship webpage for more information.

Christine Mladic
MA Candidate at CLACS

The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat

I read this book recently for a class, and I highly recommend it. In the midst of a syllabus of non-fiction, The Farming of Bones had captured my attention since the day my used copy arrived in the mail. I thought that I would breeze through it – it’s a thin book, with rather unobtrusive cover art, and the only thing I knew about Edwidge Danticat came from brief mentions of her compelling storytelling skills from friends who had read her other books.

Where I usually have to bury myself in my little Brooklyn apartment hunched over a reading light in silence or listening to dramatic, instrumental movie soundtracks in order to fully digest my readings for the week, I found myself reading this book everywhere. Frankly, it was a little unnerving being everywhere reading it, but I couldn’t put it down. Edwidge has this way of transporting you through her writing, and seeing as this book is about a violent event on the Dominican side of the border with Haiti in the year 1937, I found myself shifting between two places, two times, as I carried the book with me and read. I’d be walking down the subway stairs, then washing at the river with other servants and caneworkers. I’d get onto the B train at West 4th, only to find out that the plan to escape across the border had been discovered. Fumbling with my freezing fingers to unlock the door to my apartment, feeling the sun beating down on the small group weaving through mountain trails. Opening the refrigerator, feeling my stomach drop at the sight of parsley.

August 4, 2008 -- Members of the Washington State Cannabis Eradication Response Team (CERT), shortly before discovering over 5,600 marijuana plants being grown by a group of Mexican nationals (DEA). Photo courtesy of DEA

In his first Internet town hall meeting, Obama was asked if the U.S. should legalize pot as a way to grow jobs and stimulate the economy.

Obama responded: “I don’t know what this says about the online audience, but, no, I don’t think that is a good strategy to grow the economy.”

Now of course he has to say this. His risk of alienating a large portion of the country and losing all support from the proverbial “aisles” is far too great for such a radical idea. But what if the question included avoiding US involvement in the Mexican drug war? Are we going to wait until our politicians, judges and law enforcement officials are infiltrated by the Mexican traffickers before we even consider a novel approach to a problem we have been throwing money and guns at (unsuccessfully) for years?